Movie Review: ‘The Gorge’ is ridiculous

In the movies, we’ve had green valleys, haunted hills and grand canyons. But only now has the time arrived for a long-overshadowed land formation. “The Gorge,” a preposterous new videogame-like thriller, at least succeeds in, um, gorging on this often-overlooked geological feature.

The gorge in question, to be fair, is a beauty. In some northern forested wilderness sit two concrete towers, one for each side of a wide, foggy ravine encircled by sheer rock steeps. Two expert snipers – Levi ( Miles Teller ) from the U.S., and Drasa ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), placed by Russia — have been dropped off to man their respective stations.

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Both are conscripts of a sort. Levi has been a private contractor for the military since being psychologically deemed unfit for service by the Marines. ( Sigourney Weaver plays the cryptic woman who hires him.) Drasa is Lithuanian. Each operates in the murky quasi-official world of covert military operations. All they know is that they’re to be at this ultra-classified post for a year, part of an annual rotation. Their main job is to shoot anything that comes out of the chasm below.

What’s inside? The guy Levi is replacing thinks it could a portal to hell. “The Gorge,” directed by Scott Derrickson (“Doctor Strange,” “The Black Phone”) from a script by Zach Dean (“The Tomorrow War,” “Fast X”), unpeels these mysteries in a film that, if it wanted to, could be a very atmospheric post-Cold War parable, a kind of kaiju-in-the-ground thriller, about deep-buried military secrets.

That may be the backdrop, but “The Gorge” wants to be something else, too. It wants to be a love story. Taking after the hybrid DNA horrors that emerge from below, “The Gorge” mixes rom-com with sci-fi, with mostly ridiculous results. This is the rare movie to boast both horse-riding tree-zombies (that’s what I said) and so, so many T.S. Eliot references.

There is good preposterous and bad preposterous. “The Gorge” — which I’m happy to report features the line “The gorge is exposed!” — may find some believers on both sides of that gulf. The production quality is well above the grade of its script, with cinematography by Dan Laustsen (Guillermo del Toro’s regular DP) and a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (coming off their incredible 2024 of “Challengers” and “Queer” ).

But the tonal swings, not to mention the gloss that covers the whole enterprise, make “The Gorge” an intriguing but empty genre mash-up and streaming-only exercise.

Like would-be lovers who spy each other across balconies, Drasa and Levi find their gazes trained more on each other than the evil that lurks below. It begins with a sign that could be called a tad cutesy for an elite sniper (“What’s your name?”). As the months go by, their interactions advance to dancing and even, with the help of some rappelling rope, a dinner date.

You could at this point be asking yourself a few questions. If some version of hell was pried open, would we, perhaps, want more than two guards? But if we’re going with two, how likely is it, with ghoulish things sporadically climbing up from the abyss, that they would soon begin a “Love, Actually”-style courtship of holding up signs for each other?

These aren’t quibbles that “The Gorge” has any time for, though. Though the movie’s flow is choppy and occasionally distracted by overly showy camera moves, it zips along and soon enough the two of them are shooting at what you could only call skull spiders. Questionable as the romantic turn is, Taylor-Joy and Teller have convincing chemistry. Plus “The Queen’s Gambit” fans can rejoice at the chance to again see Taylor-Joy play chess, albeit in a slightly different context.

Once we get a decent view of the creatures they’re charged with keeping under control, they appear half tree root, half human, like demon Groots. “The Gorge” is better before our main characters are no longer poised at the mouth of hell but running through the gorge floor. One minute, they’re swaying to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the next they’re being swallowed by an adhesive root system. “The Gorge” is pretty superficial stuff, but perhaps we can await its even shallower sequel, “The Gully.”

“The Gorge,” an Apple Studios release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for intense sequences of violence and action, brief strong language, some suggestive material and thematic elements. Running time: 127 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.